Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Who or The What?

I’m a pantser, which means I write as things pop into my
head, rather than plotting everything out in an outline ahead of time. Usually,
a character will start talking to me and if I’m smart, I’ll write down what he
or she says immediately. If I don’t, either the conversation disappears or
continues to scroll through my brain until I finally do write it down (think of
a song that gets stuck in your head and you’ll get the idea). All of this means
that most of the stories I write are character driven.

However, the current stories I’m writing are plot driven.
Yes, I said “stories.” Because right now, I’m in the process of writing three
of them. At the same time. If this continues, I may have to become a plotter—I
don’t think I can keep three stories straight in my head at the same time. But
I digress.

The three stories I’m currently writing are plot driven currently,
because what popped into my head were scenes involving something happening.

In the first story, the meeting of the hero and the heroine
was the first scene that popped into my head. She’s having a battle with a lawn
mower and he comes and helps her conquer it. Just in case you think that he
spends the entire book rescuing her, don’t worry. He doesn’t. The next scene
that I’ve written, which actually won’t take place until much later in the
story, is the hero waking from a nightmare and the heroine comforting him. The
inspiration for this story comes from an old house I recently saw. I started
wondering about who had lived there during its 140-year-history and have come
up with a story about the most modern of the inhabitants.

In the second story, I’m moving onto book two in my Jewish
romance series and this story revolves around the story of Passover. It’s not
fully fleshed out and I only have one scene—again, a middle scene—the hero is
working through an issue and the heroine is helping him. But it is plot driven
because the story will revolve around the theme of freedom. Everything that
happens to my characters will relate back to that theme in some way or another.

Finally, in my third story, I’m moving into totally
different territory. It’s an experiment. The story is based on a mystery in my
family that I’ve pieced together involving immigration, infidelity and
mysterious family relationships. It’s not a true story, because I have no way
of verifying any of the facts anymore—all the people directly involved are long
dead. But it’s a “what if” scenario that I’ve been dying to write and
hopefully, with a lot of research, I’ll be able to do it.

8 comments:

I started my three WIPs with characters and a theme, but after writing myself into numerous dead ends, I discovered Syd Fields and Larry Brooks. It is a challenge to rewrite with a belated plot outline, but having the "beats" at the right places will pay off. My next novel will be outlined (plotted) before I start. I've learned my lesson.

Ana, you always have great trade book suggestions! I'll have to add them to my list.

Journey of Life, thanks for stopping by to read and comment. Non-fiction books are great, but you should try some more fiction--we have a terrific list of books written by guest bloggers on our site. Try some and let us know how you like them.

I find I can only concentrate on one story at a time, so I'm well impressed about your three different ideas! I don't think I'll ever be a plotter though. I start with a vague idea and explore it to see where it takes me. Different ideas occur to me as I go along and of course, often the characters themselves take over and sometimes lead me up blind alleys! Their characters and personalities develop as I write, too, and I love the way they surprise me at time. My hero in my current WIP has just done that with an incident from his childhood!

I'm finding the three stories keep me from getting bored--I work on whichever one suits my fancy at the time. If they continue (for all I know, one, two or all of them may fall flat), I'll probably have to stick to one to the finish and then move onto the next, etc. But for now, I'm hopping!

I become too engrossed in my characters in one story to switch to another - unless I get stuck on one novel, in which case I switch completely to another. So I do have another story half written which I've left to concentrate on the current WIP. I doubt I'll ever become a plotter though!